Coincidence
by Sonata Appassionata
Summary: Let's just say that picking rotten slime during a detention with Slughorn had never before felt so good. Mild Ted/Andromeda.


**For the Marauder's Era Competition on HPFC with the scenario _detention_ and the character _Ted Tonks_. Prompts used: memorised, shiny, controlling, specialty. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything. **

X

"Hey, Ted! That Slytherin girl Andromeda just asked me to tell you that she's landed herself in detention every day after dinner for the whole of next week. Picking rotten slugs. No idea why she'd want to tell you that, though. She said that a smart Ravenclaw like you will figure it out."

"Okay. Thanks, Lee."

X

Forget Transfiguration or Defence Against the Dark Arts. Potions lessons had, conveniently, by far the best opportunities to wreak havoc. With the multi-coloured, steamed air, the gentle roar of fifteen shiny, boiling cauldrons, coupled with the general din of people chopping ingredients and adjusting scales - not forgetting, of course, the readily available supply of hazardous, dubiously shiny liquids, Potions classes should really have warranted a higher security level. Who knew what the Slytherins and Gryffindors got up to in these classes. Really, Ted could not look five inches with seeing something that could potentially kill someone.

Nobody needed have worried, though, because it was not a Slytherin or a Gryffindors plotting nefarious deeds of doom. It was merely Ted, the Ravenclaw, whose deeds were most certainly _not_ nefarious in the slightest. Not _extremely_, anyway.

X

No one was in the vicinity when the cauldron exploded. All books and bags were also safely out of the way. Ted, of course, had not planned to actually _kill_ anybody, or seriously maim their prized possessions. That sort of behaviour was perhaps a tad too extreme. Even so, it left a smoking black crater in the centre of the classroom floor, residual acid steaming across a collapsed chair, and bits of shrapnel that was once a perfectly fine desk - and, of course, fourteen screaming classmates.

Ted could not pretend that he felt _no_ guilt at all. Still, the mess was nothing that a sixth-year Ravenclaw like him could not fix within an hour.

"Merlin's beard!"

Slughorn pulled out the burnt firecracker from inside the cauldron. The class went quiet, all watching, wide-eyed.

One second. Two second. Three. Four. Five seconds of pained, strained silence.

"It was Ted, Professor!" Lee Davies shouted. "I saw him! I think he did it by accident, though... I..."

Ted had to bite the insides of his cheeks to keep from grinning at the hilariously awkward look on his best friend's face as the class's eyes swivelled onto him.

"Merlin's beard, Ted!" Slughorn's bald patch was shining. "Detention, Ted! Six o' clock, my office for the whole of next week! You'll be picking rotten slugs with Miss Black from Slytherin. You're a careful boy, Ted. I would never have expected it of you."

Ted could not help it. He turned his back and grinned.

X

Andromeda looked up and smiled from behind Slughorn's back as Ted knocked on Slughorn's door the following Monday and entered.

"Late, Mr. Tonks. Now, you see these tubs? They are filled with slugs. Some are rotten, some are good. I want you to help me pick out the rotten ones and put them in this box here, before cleaning out all the tubs and stacking them beside my desk. You won't need magic. You can leave after you've finished. I will know."

With that, Slughorn shut the door to a separate room behind him, coughing slightly at the stench of rot and long dead slime that was filling up the whole office. Ted himself felt like choking, but he held back. Such behaviour just may constitute as... _ungentlemanly_. Yes. Instead, he turned to Andromeda and grinned at her.

"Pity to get yourself in detentions like these - and for another week, too!"

Andromeda waved her hand. The light caught on her high cheekbones and softened her grey eyes into laughing silver. Each time Ted thought that he memorised her features, transferring them neatly into the sketchbook hidden beneath his bed up in Ravenclaw Tower, she surprised him.

"Coincidence that you got them too and you'll have to do them with me," she was saying. "Remind me what you did?"

"I accidentally put a firecracker into someone's cauldron."

"Tut, tut. You certainly deserve these rotten slugs. You could have seriously hurt somebody."

Andromeda was laughing at him. Ted could see it. Ted could look at her forever.

"It didn't hurt anybody. It just happened that nobody was around that area. Their bags and books happened to be cleared out of the place as well."

"Coincidence?"

"It's my specialty."

Picking through rotten slugs had never before felt this good.

X

Ted did not take part in house hate. Sure, unpleasant stereotypes were true to certain extents. Some Gryffindors really could be too brash sometimes, and honestly speaking, not all Hufflepuffs were the brightest bulbs. Even some of Ted's housemates could maybe do better to look up from books once in a while.

Still, there were Slytherins like Andromeda's cousins - manipulative, controlling and up to their necks in the Dark Arts - but there were also Slytherins like Andromeda.


End file.
